All Work and No Sleep Make Sam Something Something
by DellaVie
Summary: With less than a week to save Dean, Sam's running on empty for a solution. What he gets isn't what he was hoping for. Wings!fic.


**Disclaimer:** Partly mine with a chance of not. Definitely won't be by the weekend, so no worries there.

* * *

_"Rise and shine, Sammy!"_

_Sam bolted upright in his bed, a dread embedded in the pit of his stomach. The motel room looked different. Less gloomy, more... yellow. It looked exactly like it did in Broward County, right down the radio._

_"God no," moaned its way out of Sam's mouth, causing Dean to pause his shoe-tying._

_"Come on, you love this song and you know it." Like clockwork, he turned the music up, and as Sam stared at him in abject horror, Dean pointed and started mouthing the words on his way to the bathroom._

_Stumbling – okay, falling – out of bed, Sam haphazardly reached for his jeans as Dean's tilted head slowly leaned into view, a faint gurgling was the only sound as he surveyed the room. When he determined that the thump wasn't a something requiring his attention, he raised his eyebrows before slowly backing into the bathroom again._

_Frantically, Sam scrambled out of his sweats and into his jeans, throwing a shirt on top of his current one. "Hey Dean..." He trailed off as he noticed the alarm clock blandly declared today to be TUESDAY, answering his question for him. Panic rose up in him as it was confirmed. He was back here, his own personal hell. Forced to relive the day over and over – all because of the Trickster. The panic dissipated in a blink, replaced by an overwhelming anger that bordered on the wrong side of murderous._

_When Dean finished up, he appeared just in time to see Sam slam the front door shut. Following him down to the parking lot, he found Sam rummaging through the Impala's trunk with an unsettling tenacity. "Sammy, you okay?"_

_Though his head was down, Dean thought he heard him mutter, "Not again."_

_"What?"_

_Sam finally located the wooden stake, shaking off everything on top of it as he yanked it out and slammed the lid down._

_"Hey, watch it there Sammy."_

_His face was one of grim resolve. "I'm not going through this again."_

_"Through what?"_

_Instead of answering, Sam turned and resolutely walked down the street. Dean had to hurry to catch up. "Sammy, wanna let me know what's going on here?"_

_The door to the diner was pushed open, and Sam marched up to the middle-aged man with grey hair eating pancakes. Forgetting decorum, he spun him around and shoved the stake non-too gently under his throat._

_The man looked at Sam in a mixture of confusion and fear and Dean felt it was time to step in before Sam did something stupid like off the guy in public. Sam however beat him to speak, and his words weren't exactly reassuring the crazy vibe Dean was getting from his brother._

_"This ends. Now."_

_"Wh-what are you talking about?"_

_Sam pressed the stake further and the man started to visibly panic. Dean was a little shaken by the unabashed coldness in his brothers' eyes. "Dean is not going to die."_

_The words seemed to have meaning to the man, as he dropped the fearful act and smiled. It was a nice smile, a family man's all-is-right-with-the-world smile, if not for the glint in his eyes. _

_Unsettling, malevolent and taunting at the same time. When he spoke, it was a condescending tone, as though he were talking to kids who told him that grass wasn't green, "Oh, but he is."_

_What happened next was so unexpected that Sam's firm grip on the stake loosened as the man blinked, and his eyes swam a filmy white. A smile swept across the demon's face as he stood and looked Sam in the eye;_

_"And there's nothing you can do about it."_

_--_

Sam blanched awake, his head whipping up from its resting point on his folded arms. His mind swam for a moment before his memory came back: he was looking for a way to save Dean. They had two weeks left, Lillith had the contract, and most likely the colt. They had nothing.

Actually, not true. Sam had a stiff back, courtesy of his wonderful posture in falling asleep at the table with papers scattered across it, and his laptop opened to his left. Empty cans of caffeinated energy drinks, somewhere between one and two dozen in number, littered the floor. Sam had been burning the midnight oil 25/7, long after Dean had declared this pointless and collapsed onto his bed by the door (always by the door, some habits never die) and after an extra four hours of research, Sam fell asleep still no closer than they had been since Bela's last words slipped them the piece of information they'd been hunting for.

Groggily, Sam lumbered to the bathroom, stretching out his arms and trying to get rid of that stiffness in his back. He splashed some water on his face, and wiped the sleep out of his eyes before he looked in the mirror. And looked in the mirror. And looked...

Sam blinked, shaking his head to tumble the last vestiges of sleep from his mind that are surely the blame for what he _thought_ he was seeing as he looked in the mirror. Because it wasn't possible. Actually it was possible, Sam knew that better than most. But it just wasn't _possible_ possible.

Tentatively, he glanced over his shoulder and froze. They were there; really, truly there. A cautious hand reached up to touch the feathery appendage that had somehow spurted from his back during the two hours he'd fallen asleep.

Brilliant white wings reached just above his head, before turning and running down to his knees. He plucked one of the feathers.

"Ow!"

Christ, they were definitely real. He checked to see that Dean was still asleep, only to find that the noise had stirred his brother into movement.

Sams' eyes widened and he quickly backed into the bathroom, his wings knocking everything off the counter around the sink as he slammed the door shut. Well, Dean was definitely awake now.

Sam frantically tried to think up a cover as soft thumps approached the door. When the handle wouldn't obey, Dean banged on the door.

"Sammy, you in there?"

Seeing no other option, Sam replied, "Yeah."

"Ya wanna hurry it up?"

"Uh... no?"

Knowing what was coming next, Sam cut Dean off. "I'm uhh... I'm busy."

"Doing what?"

Sam made sure there was just enough sarcasm in his voice. "What people normally do when they go to the bathroom."

Silence.

"But you're in the shower."

Sam looked around. He wasn't_ in _the shower, but he was on the wrong side of the door for his voice to be coming from the toilet. Damnit. As he struggled to reply, he heard a soft chuckle from the other side.

"Sammy, if these late night 'research' sessions are just a way to tire me out so you can go skinemax surfing. You could've just asked and I would have left the room for you."

There was a shuffling as Dean moved away from the door. In Sam's anger, he was about to open the door and give Dean a good glaring-to. But as his hand went to the doorknob, he realised that it still held the feather in it. His feather. From _his_ back.

And _that_ was a truth he didn't want to face anytime soon.

Unfortunately, fate was listening to its favourite bitch and decided to screw him over again.

"Sammy," Dean's voice carried through the door. "Want to tell me when the evil pillow demon attacked?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "Huh?"

"There are feathers all around the table." Dean's voice was contemplative, as though he was trying to figure it out.

When he continued with a, "Hey Sam?" Sam knew from Dean's tone that he'd collated his own theory, and the slightly controlled tone told Sam that whatever Dean was going to say was not something he wanted to hear right now.

Still, he answered just the same. "Yeah?"

"If you snuck out to break up a pillow fight between two buxom blondes and didn't tell me, you deserve worse than a cold shower right now."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"I mean, come on; guy has a week to live, you think his brother would invite him to take out the possibly life-threatening pyjamas-clad women. Wait, were they wearing pyjamas? Or were they more Victoria's Secret women?"

They both knew that the point of this conversation was to annoy Sam into coming out of the bathroom and explain the apparent feathers on the floor. Sam sighed, and unlocked the door.

Dean, who was now onto describing in rather salacious detail what the women most probably did when Sam had supposedly interrupted them, trailed off when he saw Sam.

Sam would have laughed at the open-mouthed gape on Dean's face if he knew it wasn't because he had friggin' _wings_. Instead he just stood there and waited for Dean to say something.

He did not disappoint. After a good twenty seconds of blinkless staring, Dean's gaze swept around the room before resting on the cluttered kitchenette counter. A smile cocked one side of his mouth up.

"Well, I guess Red Bull wasn't kidding. Who'd've thought?"

* * *

It's a oneshot as is, but I'm contemplating expanding it. I dunno. I really don't know.


End file.
